


Gratification

by Rotpeach



Series: Every Nuance of Misfortune [8]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novel)
Genre: Bloodplay, Hate Sex, Necrophilia, Other, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:59:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8853001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: You get what you've always wanted.





	

**Author's Note:**

> are you ready

It’s going to be today, I tell myself,

and I sound so convincing in my thoughts, I sound like I really know what I’m talking about, like this is

this is nothing, this isn’t a big deal, everything is going to be fine. Everything is fine. I don’t notice how stagnant the air is. How dry, how disgusting, how it’s filled with the stench of my own sweat and blood and filth. It’s just me but it’s the sickest thing I’ve ever smelled, like I’m dying, like I’m already dead, rotting in his basement like so many who have come before me

(and I swear I swear I will not be one of them I swear I will be different)

curled up and motionless with tear tracks still staining their faces, heads bowed, mouths hanging open. I have seen them.

(I am not going to be one of them.)

I hear the garage door open when he comes in and I count his steps, five directly overhead, the jangling of keys and the rustling of plastic, distant and muffled as though I’ve been buried alive and I’m hearing it through six feet of soil and worms. Already dead.

It’s going to be today. _It’s going to be today._

(One time, we sat side by side at the Braying Mule watching a herd of drunken college students come to celebrate something, and he told me, he said, “always go for the throat.”

And I hadn’t expected that. I expected a lot of things but not that.

“The throat,” he’d said, and looked at me with frightening intensity, and he went on and on about where you don’t hit someone, where it’s just annoying, where it’s not really all that effective, where it doesn’t matter, “but if you aim here,” he said, and touched his fingertips lightly above his larynx, “they won’t be able to breathe for a little bit. That gives you all the time you need.”

This was a while ago, I think, before the uneasiness really settled in, when I thought—and I was a fool, I know that, I know that—I really thought we were both getting something out of whatever we had going on, so it was worth it to work together, it was worth it to cooperate.

For some reason, he really thought I’d come to the bar without him one of these days. “You might get a taste for something warmer,” were the words he’d used, and we both laughed about it, a wolf on the forest floor and a vulture in a tree, a safe distance apart, a begrudging respect for one another’s way of life.

Of course it couldn’t last.)

The basement door creaks open and he takes the stairs slowly, slowly, pausing at each step, letting me hear the staircase groan in protest beneath his footfalls, giving me time to think about it.  Eleven steps before his boots hit the concrete floor and the lights flicker on. He drags a folding chair over from the corner and sits across from me. I look up and meet his eyes, wolf to vulture, predator to scavenger.

He smiles at me the same way he did when he pulled me aside and asked if I’d called the police,

(forever ago, what feels like and surely must be forever ago, in a past life)

enthusiastic, excited, _intimate._ Whatever hangups he had yesterday making him hesitant are gone now and he’s made up his mind.

It’s going to be today.

He doesn’t speak at first, and I think we both must be remembering every moment that led up to this.

(Back when I didn’t know, when I smiled at him as he wheeled his cart by and thought in passing of inviting him out somewhere, just for fun, just to be friendly, because I fell for it and I thought he was lonely, too, I didn’t realize he was lying, lying to my face,

I was lying on the ground and insects were crawling on me, I was bleeding and I was cursing my own ignorance, I didn’t know then, I didn’t know, but I learned so much,

sitting at the bar after I was done trying to reason my way back into innocence, done saying, “this isn’t me, this isn’t me at all,” because it was always me.

It was me all along.

I was waiting for an excuse, a reason.

He gave that to me.

Somehow, I manage to be resentful even now.)

“The store feels strange without you there,” he says. Small talk. Meaningless conversation. I’m not worth anything more. “Jane was worried. She asked if I’d heard from you.” He smiles absently. “We’ve never really talked before. She’s nice, isn’t she? Kind of stupid in an endearing way. I told her we should get drinks sometime. I thought about bringing her over today to give you a little company, but,” and he pauses, reaching behind himself and revealing a hunting knife with a black handle and a wicked-looking curved blade that makes the one I’m sitting on look tame and childish in comparison, “then I had a better idea.”

I watch him as he rises from his seat and passes by me, going over to the refrigerator against the basement wall.

“I wanted this to be special,” he says. “Just the three of us, just like how it started.”

My mind goes blank. “Three of us?” I repeat shakily, and I try not to sound desperate, I try not to let him hear the last traces of hope in my voice.

(It can’t be.)

He turns away from me and opens the refrigerator door. I smell a distinctive chemical odor over the persistent and cloying stench of decay.

(It can’t be.)

“What if I told you,” he says, “that she’s been here this whole time?”

_(It can’t be.)_

He grips her by the arm and her skin tears at the shoulder, connective tissue rotten and weak, and tosses her on the floor. She lands on her side, strands of hair standing out against her pale cheeks and bloodless lips, catching on the strips of flesh dangling off of her skull. I reach out and press my fingertips to her arm and my mind is reeling, my body is shaking, I don’t believe it but she’s really there she’s real she’s so soft she’s turning green and purplish-red but it’s her it’s really her it’s really her it’s really

“I never buried her,” Strade says, voice quiet but trembling with barely suppressed excitement, his hand landing heavily on my shoulder. I didn’t see him move. “After you saw her in the trunk, I took her home and I thought I’d save her just in case.”

She’s cold. I run my hand over her side, along the curve of her body, and I want to take her in my arms, want to share my body heat and look into those sunken, lonely eyes,

(tell her, _“I waited for you,”)_

but Strade’s grip on my shoulder tightens and I can hear his uneven, shuddering, breathless laughter.

“What’s that?” he asks, and I almost ask what he’s talking about but I know he can see that I’m holding a knife from the angle he’s standing at. He presses his own blade against my back, scratching my skin. “What’s that you found? You think you’re going to do something with that?”

My mouth goes dry. “I….”

“You’re right,” he says, “you are,” and he shoves me suddenly. I almost fall on her but I catch myself, I carefully step around her and sink to my knees at her side, protective. “You’re going to cut her,” he tells me, gesturing with his own blade.

I shake my head weakly.

“You are,” he insists, and he steps closer. “And you’re going to take her, just like you’ve always wanted to. You’re going to make love to her corpse while you destroy it.” I must look as horrified as I feel because he throws his head back and laughs. “This is as good as it gets, buddy,” he tells me. “This is as intimate as it gets. Let’s share one last thing before it’s all over.” He unzips his pants, palming his cock as his other hand trembles around the hunting knife, knuckles turning white.

For the first time, I am disgusted with him.

“I’m not sharing her,” I say, and even though my voice is hoarse

(from screaming, from fear)

I say it with conviction.

He doesn’t care. He starts stroking himself. “I don’t want her,” he says, “I just want to see you tear her apart.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“She’s just going to rot faster now. She’ll be nothing in a few days.” He smiles, disgustingly self-assured. “Just like you. So you might as well enjoy this while it lasts.”

He squeezes at the base of his cock and grunts. I look at her,

(and I’m young all over again, I’m not with her but with _her_ , the girl in the woods who left me behind, I’m wandering around in the dark trying to call out to her but I don’t even know her name and she wouldn’t answer even if I did)

and I put a hand on her shoulder. Gentle, reassuring. Roll her onto her back and lean down to her ear. Whisper an apology.

_(“I was just trying to replace her. I never meant to hurt you. You’re just as beautiful, you mean just as much._

_But this can’t last.”)_

“Get on top of her,” Strade says breathlessly, and it sounds like he’s laughing at me.

(Like he’s any fucking better.)

I straddle her legs. She’s still so cold, her flesh cool and damp to the touch. I can smell her more strongly now, heady and nauseating. I take a deep breath so I’ll remember.

“Touch her,” he orders.

I do. I start at her face,

(finally, after all this time, I feel her)

smoothing my hands over her minced cheeks, over the slits in her lips and the mangled, thin flesh of her eyelids. I linger on the gouge at the corner of her mouth, a deep cut with bone peeking out from somewhere deep below. She’s cold. I wish I’d found her first.

Strade comes closer, standing nearly at her head. I think he must be looking at her face

(at his handiwork)

but I look up and meet his smoldering gaze, and I shudder.

He wants to watch me break.

“Stab her,” he says, licking his lips.

I don’t want to. I run my hands down her chest, over the mounds of her breasts, across the expanse of her stomach. I mutter more apologies under my breath.

_(“I have to do this, you understand? I have to. He wants to kill me, like he killed you. He’s going to bury us both in a field of wildflowers where the coyotes will pick over our bones.”)_

I take the knife, both hands wrapped around the handle, and slowly lift it over her. I hear Strade hold his breath.

(I dug through the leaves and the dirt, I scraped at the forest floor with my hands but I couldn’t find her. She was gone, and I swore

I would never fall in love again.)

The blade sinks into her face, slicing open the side of her nose and skidding on the cartilage, lodging itself in her lips. I hear the knife click against the bone. I pull out of her and plunge back in, harder this time. My whole body jolts forward and

_(oh)_

I rub against her. I do it again, on purpose this time, pressing my hips into hers, and my breath catches at the friction. Her clit is dry and withered, the flesh at the apex of her thighs discolored and festering. I

(have to remind myself to breathe)

rock against her, once more. She doesn’t move with me but she’s moved by me and it’s just as good, it’s even better.

“How does it feel?” Strade asks, and I see him eyeing the knife carefully, just as aware as I am that this could change in an instant.

(I’m going to have to surprise him.)

I shake my head. I don’t know how to explain it to him, don’t know the right words.

(it’s incredible it’s true it really is the most intimate feeling it really is the best I’ve ever had so soft _so perfect_ )

I’m rutting against her like an animal and it’s humiliating, it’s disgusting to smell the two of us meeting, living (dying?) and already dead, it’s

not enough.

I stab her in the eye, the lifeless gray blooming into red, pus and partially coagulated blood spattering over my hands and her unraveling face, scraping her skull. I think I find her brain—hear it squishing wetly beneath the blade—and heat rushes through my body.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Strade says. I can almost forget he’s in the room. It really is almost perfect, like it’s just the two of us, the way it should be, except I’m ruining what’s left of her beautiful face and body, I’m violent and cruel and terrible to her, no better than him, the same as him.

The same as him.

I choke on a sob.

Strade’s hand is moving faster, the slick sound of him getting off to the sight of us

(two of his finest works)

louder now. His eyes flutter and he starts moving his hips, fucking into his own hand as he watches me. He’s thinking about what comes next now, how he’s going to take me apart, how he’s going to make me scream. He groans low in his throat and his hips stutter and I see his cock pulsing as he cums—

(“I don’t care that you like dead bodies,” he said that night at the bar. “It’s just as natural as anything else. Nobody wants to be alone. We’re all looking for something to keep us company. We don’t want to be left behind.”

I didn’t want to admit it, so I just stared at the wooden counter. But secretly, I was happy. I thought he was starting to understand. I thought the whole thing might not be a mistake after all.

That’s when he laughed and said, “But sometimes, you have to learn to let go,” and in hindsight, I know the whole thing was a joke at my expense, from the very beginning.

Everything from “I need some help getting this into my car” and onward.

And it’s my turn to laugh.)

I punch him in the fucking throat.

He sinks to his knees, covering his neck with his cum-covered hand, trying to protect himself. I climb off of her, screaming, and flinch when he brandishes the hunting knife, stabbing him in the arm by mistake.

I don’t care. I’m not stopping.

“I knew it,” he hisses, but he’s still laughing, he’s still looking down at me, after all this time he still thinks he’s superior, “I knew you’d try something like this,” struggling to his feet when I run at him, our shadows melting into each other on the basement wall, and it’s like we’re dancing, like we’re sharing one more intimate moment, one that neither of us agreed to and we’re both trying to end it.

“I hate you,” I say between breaths, slashing at the open air when he ducks out of the way. “You think you’re so fucking smart. Think you can’t fuck up. Fucking ruined my life.”

“I helped you,” he growls, and he tries to return the favor, he grabs for any part of me he can reach but he’s still trying to catch his breath and he’s not fast enough, “You never would have seen her. Never would have felt her. I did so much for you.”

“Fuck you.”

I go for his chest and he catches my wrist, yanking me closer, and I see the hunting knife coming, I twist in his grip and feel it narrowly graze my neck, and I grip his hand with mine.

I think I can feel him shaking, adrenaline shooting through him, but I realize I’m shaking, too. We look each other in the eye.

“It was fun while it lasted,” he tells me.

I want to disagree, but maybe it was.

He tries to move first and we both almost lose our balance, clutching each other’s hands, keeping our blades at each other’s throats, pressed against each other. A blush steadily creeps across his face. “I’m going to cut your fingers off,” he says. “Slowly. Then I’m going to cut the skin between them. Then I’ll chop off your hand.”

I think I can take him. I think, maybe, I can catch him off guard again, somehow. I wouldn’t leave right away. I’d watch him bleed to death, gasping, looking up at me, for once, looking up and being forced to admit to his own shortcomings. The color draining from his face. Knife falling from his fingers. Still and silent and

“You’re thinking about it, too,” he says, accusing, ecstatic. “You’re thinking about killing me.”

I am. I’m thinking about him lifeless on the floor, about ripping up his face like he did to her, opening his stomach, cutting off his dick and fucking the wound with a knife.

He feels me shiver, I know he does. “You’re getting off on it,” he murmurs, and he almost sounds proud.

“I hate you,” I’m saying, I feel I have to say when he gives a slow, experimental roll of his hips. Just to see if either of us will flinch or lose our grip. Just to see what happens. _“I fucking hate you.”_

He laughs in my face, and then he crushes my lips with his.

He rolls my lower lip between his teeth and savagely bites it, and I scream into his mouth, tasting my own blood. My grip on his hand falters and I frantically yank myself loose, trying to disentangle my limbs from his, but he doesn’t let go. One of his hands circles around my waist to keep me pressed into him and I feel him stab me in the side, blood splattering on both of us. My thoughts start racing and I panic, I try to get him somewhere that’ll hurt, and I feel it when I manage to land a hit, hear his shirt tear somewhere and hear him grunt as I sink the knife into flesh, but we’re too close together and I can’t tell what’s happening and I look him in the eye again and realize that we’re both excited.

Something

inside of me

shifts.

 

We are animals,

fighting over the same piece of meat, sinking teeth and claws into each other. He yanks the knife out of my abdomen to stab me in the shoulder, dragging the serrated blade across my collar and pressing his mouth to the blood that pours out, lapping at my skin, and I cut him across the chest, slicing through cloth and flesh, drawing lines in his skin, destroying his clothes, trying to get closer, trying to get inside,

we are trying to devour each other when we fuck, trying to rip each other apart from the inside, rutting blindly and thoughtlessly and it has nothing to do with survival and everything to do with sensations, with satisfaction, with feeling, just feeling, touching and being close enough to hear our heartbeats and know we are not alone. I watch a sinewy strand of something inside of him stretch as it slides along the knife

(caught on my beak, reflecting in my beady, scavenger eyes,)

and I feel him spread my blood over my skin as he bites at the edges of the wound he’s made and pulls with his teeth

(shaking his head to rend as much flesh as he can)

and I think that I never really did understand

until now.

**Author's Note:**

> next time:  
> -the epilogue


End file.
